Marble Hornets OC Story
by twistedXenvy
Summary: Katie wasn't sure what she was going to find when she and Jay started looking into her cousin Alex's disappearance; but she didn't expect her whole life to completely change. I own nothing but Katie. Rated T just in case.
1. Beginnings

My first story! I decided to write a Marble Hornets OC story out of the few I've read. All reviews are welcome; I'm looking to improve. Thanks for reading :)

* * *

I don't really know why I got into this mess. It started out harmless enough. Things seemed so fine, but something went wrong, terribly wrong. I don't even know when it began; now we're stuck with no way out. I'm completely lost on how this will turn out, for all of us.

I guess I should explain somethings first; my name is Katie Hawkins. If you care to know what I look like I'm 5'7" with light brown hair to my shoulder blades and blue eyes. 3 years ago my cousin Alex Kralie began working on his student film called "Marble Hornets". I helped out with things here and there, nothing too big. Sometime during project he began acting...different. His attitude completely changed; he became more aggressive, short tempered, and he always had to have a camera with him. Now me and Alex are pretty close, almost like siblings, we could always go to each other if we had a problem. So I found it odd when he wouldn't talk to me about what was going on, not even to his best friends. Ever one else on the project couldn't stand his sudden change; he became almost impossible to work with. Soon after he stopped the film and switched schools; I never saw Alex again.

A couple of days ago I found a YouTube channel and a Twitter called Marble Hornets. Watching the videos; I found out that they were of Alex and the filming of Marble Hornets. Digging into it; I found out that Jay, a friend of Alex's who helped with the film, had gotten the tapes and was posting clips from them, hoping to find something about Alex. I contacted him in hopes of finding out anything. Jay was one of the few people that had worked on Marble Hornets that I kept in touch with. We got to talking and I told him that I had some tapes that Alex gave me. He asked to look at the them to see if there was anything important on them. I also had a flash drive with a video I took from Alex's camera 3 years ago. I had to stay at his house for a while and the first night there something...strange happened. I still don't know what happened and it still creeps me out. Hopefully these tapes could shed some light on what really happened to Alex.

I packed up the small box of tapes into my car; along with the flash drive with a video. I wasn't sure why I had kept it, while it creeped me out it felt wrong to delete it. There could be something on the video that I might of missed. I didn't have a chance to look at the others; partly because of time and what Jay had found on his. I was a little nervous about watching any of the tapes alone. The car ride wasn't too long; he lived no more than 10 minutes away from. As I pulled into the apartment complex parking lot; I saw Jay waiting for me. The first thing I noticed was the dark bags forming under his eyes.

"Hey Jay, how have you been?" I asked, stepping out of the car.

"Fine, I've been fine." I gave him a quick hug. He seemed slightly surprised but returned it.

"Are you o.k Jay? You seem nervous."

"No I'm fine, really." Something was bugging him, but it was clear that he wasn't going to tell me.

"Well, I brought the tapes. There's not many but you might find something."

"Great, let's get these up to my apartment." Fetching the box, he lead me up some stairs. He seemed to be in a hurry in getting back inside.

"I see you're still living on a college student budget. Ever thought of getting a nicer place?" I jokingly asked. Jay let out a little chuckle.

"Ha, I guess this place has grown on me. I never thought to leave." While he fished out his keys; I thought I saw someone hiding behind a tree, but a second glance showed no one was there. I would if I should say something to Jay, but not when he was so jumpy.

"Come on in, we can figure out what to do with those tapes." His apartment was fairly nice; not too small but large enough for one person. There was a box on his table filled with tapes.

"These were the ones that Alex gave you, right?" He nodded.

"Yeah, I've gone through almost half of them so far. Nothing important expect the ones I put on the channel." He paused, looking at the box I had brought.

"Katie, are you sure you want to help? I don't know what's going on and I don't want to pull you into something dangerous." I sighed; I had a feeling Jay was going to say something to change my mind.

"I want to find Alex too. He's like a brother to me, let me help," I grabbed his arm. "Please." He stared at me, and I held his gaze. This was something I wasn't going to miss out, not with Alex involved.

"It would be nice to have some help looking though all of the tapes." I gave a little smile. He signed and returned it.

"O.k, let's get started on your tapes. You said you had a flash drive with another video on it?"

"Yeah," I dug the drive out of my pocket. "It's a video from when I stayed at Alex's. The video itself isn't the only thing that's odd, but with what also happened that night it's something weird. Watching it might give you a better idea." While pulling up the video; I explained to Jay what I remembered about that night. How strange Alex was acting, the cameras set up in his room's and how he wanted to film some noises he heard during the night.

"That's an odd way to film some noises." He commented.

"I thought the same thing, but I didn't say anything. He was acting weird that night." I sighed, fast forwarding the video to the right time.

"I just want to know what happened to him Jay. I want to know what went wrong." He placed a hand on my shoulder.

"We'll figure this out, don't worry." I nodded, smiling. "Oh, here's when things get weird." The video still showed me sleeping when the door slowly opened. You could barely make out the shape of a person when distortion kicked in. It stayed like that for about a minute when the video came back. Ever thing was normal, expect the door was opened when I had clearly closed to a gasp. It was less than a minute when I awoke, the look on my face showed that I had a nightmare of some kind. I turned to look at the door, got up and left the room.

"So it just ends right after you leave the room?" Jay asked.

"Yeah, I heard some noises from Alex's room and went go check on him." He glanced over at the tapes.

"Maybe Alex's tape from that night is here. I hope you don't have any plans, cuz if you want to help we need to look through these tapes."

"I always wanted to spend my week looking at a bunch of tapes." I joking said. After about 2 hours of searching, we found it in the tapes I had brought. It showed Alex's room, the camera pointed at his door way. Nothing happened for a few moments till that strange man pushed open the door and entered his room. Alex, waking up, peered out the door than closed it. Nothing else happened till it changed to Alex sitting in front of the camera, blood dripping down his face.

"Oh my God. That's the thing that appeared in the other videos; do you think it did that too Alex?" Jay shrugged.

"Maybe, it's hard to say." Alex sat staring at the camera for a while till a alarm went of. Just as he turned off the camera, a knock was heard.

"That must of been when I went to check on him."

"Did anything else happen after he turned of the camera?" I shook my head.

"No, not really. The cut wasn't that bad so I cleaned it up. He seemed really out of it. It was like he didn't know what was going on." I paused, unsure if I wanted to tell him the main thing that bugged me about that night. "There was one other thing." Jay looked at me, waiting for me to continue. "After Alex went back to bed, I noticed something." He nodded.

"What was it?" He asked.

"There was a red mark around my neck; like someone was trying to choke me with a rope or something." He gave no response. Glancing, I saw that he was staring at the computer, mouth pressed in a thin line.

"Do you know what caused it?"

"Not at first, but after seeing that...thing, I have a feeling it could of been it."

"I see..." Why was Jay so worried about that? A small part of me said it was because he really cared about me, but I tried to convince myself he was just being a good friend.

"So what are we going to do now?" I asked.

"I'm thinking about uploading this as a new entry, only..." Jay paused, looking over at me.

"What is it?"

"If you really want to help; I'm gonna have to mention I got the video from you. Are you o.k with that?" Jay didn't want my name tied to the channel in anyway, but now he had no choice.

"I'm fine with that. I said I was going to help you no matter what, so you might as well let people know that I'm helping you." He gave me a relieved smile.

"Thanks Katie, it's...nice to know I won't have to do this alone." Jay began putting the entry together while I sat and watched. He explained to me what little he knew about totheark, the channel that was putting up video responses to the entries.

"So you don't have a clue as to who they are or what they want?"

"Not that I can tell, but the videos haven't been easy to understand." I nodded. The few that he showed me have been very cryptic and there seemed to be a hidden message in some of them.

"If it wasn't for the people that message me about what they found I may never know what there talking about."

"Yeah it is nice that people are helping you, even if it's something little." I looked at the clock. "Oh no, I have to be somewhere soon. Are you o.k if I leave?"

"Don't worry Katie," Jay said, standing up. "I'll be fine on my own. I'm just gonna look through a few more tapes while the new entry uploads. I'll let you know if I find anything." He walked me down to the end of his hallway.

"Bye Jay, and thanks for letting me help." He smiled.

"I'm glad to have your help. See ya." I flashed a smile and hurried back to my car, unaware of a shadowy figure watching me and Jay.


	2. Finding Tim

Huge thanks to Vixin2 for letting me use her OC Rebecca :) I recommend checking out her Marble Hornets story, as well as her TribeTwelve and EveryManHybrid ones.

* * *

I had decide to follow the Twitter and YouTube channels so I would know what was going on. Jay had mention me in the video; saying who I was and that I would be helping out. I had a bad feeling that is wasn't a good idea for Jay to have mention me, but it was too late and I was going to stick with Jay through all of this. He was nice enough to keep me in the loop with what people were messaging him about. According to Jay; some of the people who messaged him agreed that the creature was what attacked Alex. Why; no one had a clue about why this thing was targeting Alex in the first place. It wasn't exactly easy to find out information about this creature, which the subscribers had dubbed 'The Operator'. It was an odd name; I didn't understand why they have decided to call it that, then again I didn't understand a lot of the things they did, but at least we had a name for it. A few days later, totheark had uploaded a video called Program. Like all the others; it made little sense. The one thing that did stand out was the words 'bleed more' at the end. Was he talking about the last entry with Alex? It was hard to figure out his motives. At least I think it was a guy; I had no idea if there was more than one person. I was at Jay's not long after the video went up, going through more tapes with him.

"I wish we knew more than what's on the tape. We could be missing something important." Jay said after the third tape we watched that day.

"Why not talk to someone who was involved with the film, if you really want to know more about it." I commented.

"Yeah, but I don't think anyone is still around. I don't even know what happened to them after we stopped filming." Jay was right; even I didn't know what happened to Brain, Sarah, Tim, and Seth, but I did know of one person.

"Hey do you remember Rebecca, my cousin?" I asked.

"Alex's little sister? Yeah, I think she visited during filming. Isn't she in college?"

"She is and I think she has Tim's number. She had a crush on him and I think he liked her too." I chuckled, thinking back. Jay seemed surprised.

"Really? With how over protective Alex was of you I could only imagine how he was with Rebecca."

"Yeah, it was like I was his second sister. If he wasn't keeping an eye on me it was on Rebecca." We laughed, it was funny but the truth. "Anyway I should call her; I think she's out of her class." It had been awhile since I had talked to her; with how busy she had become and with what I was going through we didn't have the time.

"Hello?"

"Hey Rebecca it's me, Katie."

"Oh hi Kate, it's been awhile. How've you been?"

"I'm ok, same old same old. How about you?"

"I'm surviving college, so I guess pretty good." She laughed. "So what's up?"

"I know this sounds random but do you still have Tim's number?"

"I do, but what for?" I hesitated, I didn't want to get Rebecca involved with this. I decided to tell her the truth; well, at least part of it.

"You remember Alex's student film project Marble Hornets, right? Well me and Jay were thinking about finishing it."

"Jay? Was he the skinny guy who helped with stuff at the beginning?" She asked.

"Yup, that's him."

"I see; I didn't know you were into film."

"I'm not; I'm just helping out Jay."

"Ok, let me get his number." She read off his number, which I wrote down.

"Thanks Becca, this will help us alot."

"No problem, I'll talk to later. Say hi to Jay for me."

"I will, bye." I hung up, giving a little sigh. "Well that went better than I thought and Rebecca says hi." I said handing the number to Jay.

"Now let's hope Tim is willing to talk about this, but I need a reason to get him to talk about it."

"Just use what I told Rebecca; that you're going to finish the film."

"Sounds good to me." I waited while Jay called, thinking about what had happened so far. Maybe Tim could give some insight about this; we weren't making much head way ourselves. "Well, he's seems willing enough to meet. We might just get something out of this." Jay said hanging up.

"I hope so, we could sure use a helpful lead sometime soon."

Tim seemed fine with doing a screen test. I wanted to go with Jay to talk to Tim, but my mom was coming to visit. I would have tried to get out but I hadn't seen my mom is a long time, plus I didn't want to cancel on her. Jay said it was fine and insisted that I go; he said that he would try to film without Tim knowing. All I asked was he call me when it was over so I could know how it went. The whole time I with my mom I kept thinking about Jay and Tim, checking my phone when ever I could.

"Honey are you ok?" My mom asked when she caught me checking my phone. We had stopped to grab a bit to eat at a cafe.

"Huh? Oh, everything's fine. Why'd you ask?"

"Well...you keep checking your phone and you look worried. Is there something I should know about?" I couldn't just tell her what was really going on; I quickly racked my brain for a believable reason.

"I have a friend who's... getting interviewed for a job. He really needs it and I've asked him to let me know how it went." She nodded and smiled.

"I see, I hope everything goes well." I made sure to check my phone less, at least till my mom left. When Jay finally called me, he told me that everything had gone well. He managed to record without Tim knowing and asked him questions about Marble Hornets.

"He didn't remember any man in a suit, only Alex's weird behaviour and that they stopped filming because of the bad conditions at the film location." Jay told me over the phone. I had just gotten back to my apartment when he had called.

"Really? You think that a tall faceless man would be easy to spot." I said.

"Who knows? Anyway, I'm gonna put together the entry and upload it soon. We can meet up later to talk about what to do next."

"OK, see you soon Jay." I tried to spend the rest of the afternoon and the evening relaxing, waiting for the video to upload, but it wasn't easy. I had gotten a headache after I said goodbye to my mom; I took some medicine but it wasn't helping much. I tried to stay awake, until Jay uploaded the video, which he seemed to upload them at odd times. I should probably ask him why; it was a pain to stay up late, something both me and the viewers shared. Jay had also given me the password to the Twitter and YouTube account so I could post something if he couldn't. I didn't want to think about what those reasons could be. It was close to midnight when the video was finally upload. Watching, nothing seemed out of the ordinary. It was just as Jay had said, he asked Tim about Marble Hornets and Tim said what little he knew. He mention Alex's strange behavior, his sudden need to have a camera in him at all times, and never seeing the strange creature. He said something about someone leaving dead animals on his yard, something Alex never talked about. Tim really didn't give much insight than what we knew. Jay said that this is how things had been going; search the tapes, upload the entry, see if totheark responses, so on and so on. Fairly boring, but what would you expect when you're trying to get information about something that seldom people know about. It was only a few days later when TTA uploaded a video called Advocate and when Jay called saying he got a strange message and that I should come over.

"Is this all it says?" I asked. Jay was showing me a message he got on AIM, the username was darksecret34. It read: _To find the answers you seek, go to 162 Shepherds Rd to find Brain. But be warned, you may have to pay a price for the information you desire. _It was creepy to say the least.

"Do you know where this is?" He asks.

"It sounds familiar but I can't place where." I thought for a moment. "I don't like this. Who just sends someone a weird message like that. Do you even know this guy?"

"No, I don't know anyone by that username."

"Can we even trust this guy? We don't really know if they are telling the truth." Jay shrugged.

"It's hard to say, but it's the only lead we've gotten. I think it needs to be checked out."

"Alright then; when are we going?" He didn't respond. "Jay, we are going right?" He turned in the chair to face me.

"Katie, I'm going alone."

"Alone? You can't go by yourself; it could be dangerous."

"Exactly, that's why I'm going alone. I don't want anything to happen to you." I blushed; did he really care about me that much? He was more concerned for my safety than his own.

"You shouldn't have to go alone." I muttered. We were at an impasse; Jay wanted to protect me and I wanted to help in any way.

"You'll be the first to know if anything happens, OK?" I looked back at him.

"Call me when you're out of there?" I asked. Jay smiled.

"Deal. Don't worry too much, it might just be someone playing a joke."

"I really hope you're right Jay." I muttered.


	3. The Abandon House

Jay's trip to the house was uneventfully, much to my relief. I didn't want to admit it, but I had a crush on Jay 3 years ago. I didn't say anything because he was my friend and because of how over protective Alex was of me. Now that we've met up again, those feelings were returning. I did care a lot about him, but now wasn't the exact time to get a boyfriend. He managed to find some strange drawings, pills, and a bullet case. He also found dried blood in the bathroom sink. Strange thing was; it wasn't that late when Jay returned last night, but he felt extremely tired for some reason. He had been feeling sick since he came back and had been sleeping a lot. It was past noon when he called me to come over a few days later. He wanted me to edit and upload his trip to the house, since he still wasn't feeling good.

"I looked through a few of the tapes," I said a week later. "and I found a video of you, Tim, and Alex going over some lines. I think it's near the beginning of production, based on how Alex sounds. There are some weird things on it"

"Well, I have nothing better to do. Let's see it." This tape was Jay helping Alex go over the lines with Tim. Ever thing seemed to be ok, save for video and audio distortion at the end. The more we watched the video; the more Jay's facial expression changed.

"So, what do you think?" I asked. Jay didn't respond. "Jay? What is it?"

"Katie...I don't remember any of this. Not a single thing." I was in shock.

"You don't remember anything? How can that be?"

"I don't know, I honestly don't know." He put his face in his hands, clearly upset. I placed my arms around his shoulders, giving him a hug.

"It's ok Jay, it's probably nothing. It was long ago; you could have just forgot about it." We sat in silence for a few minutes; I didn't really know how to comfort him.

"I think I should go back to that house, might of missed something." He glanced at me, catching my glare. "Ok, you can come. Just promise me you won't so anything dangerous."

"Me do something dangerous? I think you're talking about yourself."

"You know what I mean." Jay said, giving me a smile.

"If your trip was fine, I'm sure this one will be too."

We were sitting in the driveway of the house; it was about 10 p.m. and very dark out. I was a little nervous about breaking into a house, despite that fact it looked like no one lived here.

"You can always wait in the car if you want to." I glanced back at Jay; he was messing with the camera, not looking at me.

"I've come this far, I'm not turning back. Now let's go before someone sees us." With flashlights for both of us and Jay with the camera and pocket knife, we made our way to the front door. Jay tried to open it, but it didn't budge.

"Still locked, let's try the back." He led me around to the back of the house, suddenly stopping when the door came in sight.

"Odd, the door's off its hinges." That immediately was a red flag for me but Jay headed inside anyway, I quickly followed behind. We entered what looked to be a living room; the couch was turned upside down and there was a bunch of paper all over the floor.

"What's with this place? Was it like this when you came?"

"Yeah and so was this, take a look." He opened a closet door; there was what looked like blankets and a makeshift bed.

"Man, this place is a mess, can't imagine anyone living here." I followed Jay down the hall towards the front door.

"I'm going to check upstairs." I said starting my way up.

"Ok, I'll be up shortly." Jay paused by the front door to pick up a weird white doll. I had made it to the top and was about to head to what looked like a bedroom when I heard Jay call out.

"Alex?" I froze; Alex was here, in the house? Did we miss him coming in? I heard Jay call out again, then running and someone being tackled.

"Jay!" I hurried back down the stairs, stopping at the bottom; Jay was struggling with an unknown man. I hung back, unsure of what to do. Suddenly the man collapsed to the ground, having some sort of seizure. Jay stood back, leaning down to pick up the camera he dropped, breaking hard.

"A-are you ok?" I shakily asked; Jay nodded trying to catch his breath. "What about him?" I nodded towards the attacker. He was about Jay's height and had dark brown or black hair. What was really creepy was his mask; it was white with the lips painted black, a band around the edge and the eyes and strange eyebrows.

"Don't know; pretty sure I didn't hit him that hard." He knelt next to the man, who had stopped convulsing. Jay reached for the mask when-

"No!" The man muffle shouted and shoved Jay away, causing him to trip back into the living room. I made to follow when he grabbed the hood of my jacket and slammed me into a wall.

"Ahh! Let-let me go!" My ponytail was pressing into my skull, causing a headache to form. I tried to shove him off me but he held one of my arms, his other pressed across my shoulders keeping me against to the wall. Kicking him didn't help; he seemed unaffected by my feeble attempt. He simply stared at me with his head tilt a little sideways; his mask giving the appearance that he had no eyes. I simply stared back; terror plainly on my face. Was he going to kill us? He suddenly let go and nearly threw me into the living room. I stumbled forward and hit the ground hard. My head was pounding; I couldn't think straight but my body was moving. The last thing I remember was Jay dragging me out the door, then blackness.

"Katie, wake up. Katie!" I felt someone shaking my shoulder. Opening my eyes; I was temporarily blinded by sunlight before I saw that I was in the passenger's seat of Jay's car, Jay in the driver's. Glancing around, I noticed we were off the side of the road near some woods.

"Jay? Where-where are we?"

"I don't know. I don't remember how we got here. The last thing I do remember is pulling you out of the house."

"Yeah, me too." I tried to sit up but a pain shot through my skull. "Agh, my head..." I fell back against the seat, blankly noting my hair was down. Jay reached over, lightly touching my forehead.

"Where did you get this large bruise from?"

"Bruise? What bruise?"

"The one right here." He pressed on it causing me to yelp out of pain. "Sorry, sorry. I didn't mean to hurt you." He held my face to examined the bruise, careful not to touch it.

"It must have happened when that masked man threw me to the ground. I hit my head pretty hard back there." I tried to control my blush as he continued to gentle hold my face.

"Well it doesn't look too bad. You should be ok in a few days." He let go of me and reached for the camera, which was sitting on the dashboard. "The camera still works, so that's one good thing out of this mess."

"I rather watch that later, if you don't mind. I just feel like sleeping and getting something for my headache." I hadn't noticed at first, but I felt very tired and this headache wasn't helping.

"Sure, we can wait till later. I'm pretty tired myself." Jay said starting the car. I just stared out the window, not really looking at anything. Last night seemed so long ago, even if it was several after. Then there was that man; was he somehow involved in this? Was he the totheark that was posting strange video responses? I would worry about that stuff later, right now all I wanted to do was rest.

* * *

Just wanted to let you know that I won't be posting as often, since I've started my first year of college. I'll try to work on it as much as I can, but I won't be able to get them out often.


	4. Jay's Little Secret

It had been a couple of weeks after we had visited the house; my bruise was almost gone but the headaches remained. After our encounter with the masked man; Jay insisted that I stay at his place, at least for a while. I wouldn't say it, but I was glad Jay offered. I was scared to be alone; I was afraid that he would come for me while I was by myself. We've spent a lot of time looking through the tapes, hoping to find something but with little luck.

"We've looked through almost all these tapes and we still haven't found anything." I sighed; we had been going at this for hours, it was pretty late when we decided to stop.

"I think we deserve a break from this, we should go out and do something. Tell you what; I'll treat you to some lunch out. Sound good?" Jay asked me.

"Sounds like a plan to me. It'll be nice to do something other than watch these tapes." I smiled; a lunch out with Jay was just what I needed.

"Good night Katie. I'll see you in the morning."

"Night Jay."He went into his room, shutting his door. I yawn, ready for a hopeful good night sleep.

_I was standing in the middle of a forest. The trees were tall and their leaves were covering most of the sky, but I could tell it was about mid afternoon. I didn't know why, but I wanted to get out of here, and fast. Someone started singing; it sounded like a girl's voice._

_Come little children, I'll take thee away_

_Into a land of enchantment_

_I began to follow it, trying to find the source. Strangely the closer I got the harder it was to make out the words. A buzzing noise was growing as I got closer and I kept coughing. Soon I arrived at a meadow filled with flowers; in the center was two girls. One had light brown hair in a pony tail wearing a light blue dress, the other had dark brown hair in two pigtails wearing a pale yellow dress. They looked no more than 6. Their backs were to me and they both were making a crown of flowers. "What are you two doing here?" I asked, approaching the girls. They said nothing, just continued humming to themselves. "You girls shouldn't be here by yourself." I reached out to touch one of them when I was over come with a large coughing fit. I fell to the ground, keeping a hand over my mouth and using the other for support. I couldn't control it; when I looked at my hand I saw blood. Peaking back, I saw the girls had turned their attention to the woods across from us. The girl in blue called out, "Mr. Slendy! Have you come back to play with us?" I fainted, but not before I saw someone stand in front of the girls. _

I shot up, coughing hard. It was a few minutes before I finally stopped, without blood this time. I checked my phone; it was a little after midnight. I glanced around Jay's living room, my heart still pounding from the dream. I couldn't decide if it was more strange or creepy. There was something familiar about the dream, but I couldn't figure out what. I laid back on the couch, hoping to fall back asleep and forget the dream. Suddenly, there was a bang out of nowhere. I sat up again; that sounded like it came from Jay's room.

"Jay? Everything all right?" No response. "Are you ok? Jay!" I hurried over to his door and knocked. "Jay, answer me. This isn't funny, please answer me." I didn't hear anything from inside, which worried me even more. ""That's it, I'm coming in." Opening the door, I peered inside and was surprised at what I found.

Nothing; Jay's room was empty, he was gone. His keys were still in the little bowl he kept on his dresser; he never left without them. I did a quick search of his room; from what I could tell nothing was missing. Instead; I found something new that I never noticed before.

"A camera? Why is this here." It was half hidden under a shirt, something that he must have hid from me when ever I was in his room. I wondered why he would keep this from me when an answer quickly came to my mind. Jay was filming himself, just like Alex did. I'd bet that Jay had another camera somewhere in his apartment, probably to keep an eye on me while I slept.

"Jay...I hope you're not ending up like Alex." I was growing more and more scared and worried. There was no way Jay could have left the apartment without me knowing. I didn't hear a door open and his window was still locked, so he couldn't have gone out through it. I sat down on the edge of the bed, feeling a little sick. Worrying so much wasn't helping the situation; I made my way back to the living room, trying to tell myself that Jay was ok and that he'll be back. My headache wouldn't subside and I was coughing more and more. I leaned against the wall; sliding down to the floor as the coughing became harsher. I was scared that I might start coughing up blood, just like in my dream. After a few minutes they slowly stopped and with some glasses of water I felt better, save for the headache. I took some aspirin, hoping it would be enough for the headaches to stop so I could sleep. Laying down on the couch I soon drifted off to sleep, telling myself if Jay was still missing in the morning I would worry then.

The first thing I did when I woke up was check out Jay's room. Much to my relief he was back, still sleeping. I closed his door; I'd talk to him later about him disappearing and the camera when he woke up. I was going to check the Youtube and Twitter accounts when I saw a piece of paper folded on top of my laptop. I remember it wasn't there last night and I'm pretty sure it wasn't there when Jay went missing. All that was written on the outside was my name. The inside was what really worried me.

i hOpe yOu slept well last night

yOu didn't lOOk cOmfOrtable

All the O's had an X through them, just like the strange symbol that we've been seeing. There wasn't anything that gave away who left me the note. It clearly wasn't Jay, he wasn't one for pranks. I felt a chill go down my spine; someone had been watching me sleep. Who ever it was had access to the apartment, but the doors and windows were locked so how did they get it?

"Katie, what are you looking at?" I jumped; I didn't hear Jay leave his room. I quickly hid the words from him.

"This? Oh just a note I wrote to myself, nothing important." He nodded, thankfully not asking any more. I debated when to question Jay; by the looks of it he didn't remember his disappearing act last night so I had to make the first move.

"Jay, there are somethings I need to ask you." We were about to head out for lunch; I was waiting for Jay to finish up somethings on the computer.

"What's up." I hesitant; I wasn't really sure to ask him.

"Where you up sometime last night, around 2?"

"At 2? No, I think I slept through the night. Why do you ask?"

"Well...last night I heard some noise coming from your room. When I went to check it out you were gone." He stared at me, shocked. "I checked the doors and windows; they were all locked. It was like you vanished." He leaned back into the chair, a shocked look still on his face.

"I just vanished? That's...impossible; there's no way. I-I need to check it." He muttered the last part to himself, heading to his bedroom.

"Are you going to check your camera?" He froze and turned to look at me. I simple stared at the floor, afraid to meet his eye.

"What camera?"

"The one I found while looking for you. You have it hidden on your dresser."

"...I don't know what you're talking about." I could tell I got him; Jay was never a good liar.

"You know exactly what I'm talking about." I looked him squarely in the face; trying to stay calm. "You've been recording yourself, just like Alex did."

"No, i-it's not like that..."

"I'm scared Jay, I'm scared that if you keep recording yourself you might end up like Alex. I won't know what to do then!" I nearly broke down, holding my face in my hands. I heard Jay move and the couch sag down. He put his arm around me, giving me a half hug.

"I understand that you're worried about me, but you don't have too. I started doing it after when had the encounter with that masked man, when you started staying over." I waited, trying to see what he was getting at. "I did it for my safety and for yours. I know you don't like people worrying about you but I didn't want something bad to happen to you because of me. I just want to know you're ok Kate." I peaked at him, still hiding my face.

"That's the only reason?"

"I promise you that's the only reason why." I had to smile; Jay might do strange things, but most of the time he had a good reason.

"I don't get why you hid this. I would have understood if you would have explained why."  
"I wasn't sure how you were going to react. Apparently I do some pretty strange things." I chuckled; he was right about that, somethings he did wasn't exactly normal. "Hope you don't mind waiting for lunch a little longer, I want to see what really happened to me last night."

"I was going to ask the same thing." The beginning of the tape was normal; Jay went to bed a little before midnight and fell asleep. It was just after midnight when the masked man appeared in his room, just watching Jay. Suddenly both of them disappeared and Jay didn't return for 3 hours.

"Well, at least we know what really happened." I commented.

"The fact that it was that masked man doesn't make it any better. He knows where I live and he can break into my apartment."

"We just have to keep on eye out for anything strange."  
"What isn't strange anymore?" He had a point, our lives haven't exactly been normal for sometime now. "I'm going to upload this; you were right I shouldn't have hidden this from you and everyone."

"That's fine, do you want to grab lunch after you're done?"

"I lost my appetite. You can go out and get something if you want, I'll be right here."

"Ok, I'll see you in a few." Jay nodded his head, typing away on his computer. I headed out the door, not really hungry myself but I wanted sometime to think. We had gotten into something much bigger than I first believed; I didn't know how all this was going to end and I wasn't sure if I wanted to.


	5. The Red Tower

We had been looking through the stuff that Jay had taken during his first trip to the abandon house. Apparently, the bullet casing was missing and the pill bottle was empty, which Jay swore was fill when he got it. He believed that the masked man had taken them, who the viewers dubbed 'Masky'; a name that had become popular among them. Why they give nicknames to strange creatures and people was beyond me; I tried not to question it too much. With the papers; they looked like the ones Alex had drawn but one mentioned meeting at a tower, possibly the one from Entry 5. With no other leads we decided to check it out.

"How much longer do you think it'll take?" We had been driving for over 40 minutes and I was starting to get impatient.

"We're almost there. 5 minutes tops." I sighed; I was a little nervous about what we could find at the park and the tower. After all, it was were that creature started appearing. When we finally arrived, the main entrance to the park was gated off.

"Odd, I didn't expect them to have the entrance blocked off."

"I'm pretty sure there's a side way to get in, right?" I asked.

"Yeah, but it's a little ways from the tower. We're gonna have to walk through some of the woods to even reach the park."

"Well, good thing I wore my hiking shoes. We better get started then." Turning around, we went back till we found a small dirt parking lot where a trail started. If I remembered correctly this trail would lead us to the field across from the red tower. Heading down the trail I noticed that some of it was overgrown, like no one had been down this path for a while.

"I'm going to start recording, in case something happens." Jay said.

"Ok." We continued on in silence, making a comment now and then. The trees gave a lot of coverage, making it seem darker than it was. I had to resist the urge to keep looking over my shoulder; I couldn't get rid of the feeling that we were being watched.

"You ok Katie, you've been quiet for a while now."

"Oh, yeah I'm fine. I'm just worried that masked man will appear."

"Don't worry, I'm sure he's not here. Probably won't come after us in broad daylight." I caught him taking a quick glance behind us. It didn't make me feel better, but it was nice that Jay was trying to calm my nerves.

"If you say so..." I moved a little bit closer to Jay, our arms almost touching. He quietly put his free arm around my shoulder, bringing me closer. I glanced at him; he simply smiled and lightly kissed my forehead.

"Don't worry Kate; I won't let anything happen to you." I looked away, trying to hide my blush and smile.

_I can't believe he kissed me! Well, that hardly counts as kiss but that's besides the point. I wonder if he likes me... no he couldn't, I'm just his friend and Alex's cousin, nothing more..._

I was lost in my thoughts for the rest of the trip through the woods. We soon came to the field near the back of the park, the red tower across from us.

"There it is. Come on, let's see what surprises await us."

"I bet it's a bunch of puppies and kitties with flowers and rainbows everywhere." I sarcastically said, leading the way across the field.

"Aren't you allergic to flowers?"

"A slight allergy to pollen, there's a difference. But aren't guys allergic to all that girly stuff?" I jokingly asked. Jay smirked back at me.

"Funny, you're a real comedian." Arriving at the tower, it was clearly run down; I think it was used as a rock climbing wall at one point. There was a lot of plants growing around the base; the wood looked to be very old, I was surprised it was still standing. We started looking around the tower, trying to find anything out of place.

"Katie, I found something." Jay called from another side of the tower. Heading over; Jay had found the strange circle symbol drawn on the side of the tower.

"Well, this confirms we're in the right place." I nodded in agreement. A part of me was saying that this was a bad idea and leave now; but we couldn't leave, not just yet. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed an opening into the tower.

"It looks like we can get in through here." There wasn't a lot of space inside, with all the wood and trash on the ground.

"Do you think what we're looking for is in here?" I asked looking up to the top of the tower.

"Not sure but there's only one way to find out." Jay said testing his weight on the ladder.

"Wait, you're not going to climb that thing and take the camera are you?"

"How else are we going to see what's up there and I need to record this." He clearly didn't see what I was worried about.

"Well you could fall and hurt yourself if you're going to climb with one hand."

"I'll be fine, really. I need you to stand outside and keep watch for me, I'm not sure if we're allowed to be here."

"Fine but it's not my fault if you break an arm." Jay chuckled a little.

"Just stay away from the flowers." I marched back outside, mumbling about how dense Jay was sometimes. I could faintly hear Jay climbing up the ladder, the wood creaking every now and then.

"This is your worst idea ever. If you fall and survive I might just kill you." I said to myself. I couldn't get rid of this foreboding feeling I had ever since we first saw the tower. The symbol and how there wasn't anyone around was making me tense.

"Katie? You still down there?" I heard him call from the top of the tower.

"Jay, is everything alright?"

"Yeah, I found a silver case up here."

"That's great, now get back down here before you hurt yourself." Glancing around, I didn't still see anyone nearby but I didn't want to take any chances. The last thing I wanted was to get caught by the police and lose the only lead we had. I heard what sounded like metal hitting wood then a much louder crash. "Jay!" Running back inside; Jay was laying on his side, the camera and a metal case by him. "Jay! Are you ok? Oh god please be ok." I knelt by him; my breath feeling caught in my throat and my heart pounding in my chest.

"Ugh...Katie, that you?" He slowly sat up, sore from his fall.

"Jay, you're alright." I couldn't help but throw my arms around him, then punched his arm.

"Ouch! What was that for?"

"I told you to be careful you idiot." I gave him a hug again; Jay was slightly surprised by my sudden changes in emotion but returned it. "Don't ever scare me like that again, you hear?"

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to scare you." He gave a small smile as I helped him help. "Here, are you ok?" I asked handing him the camera and the case.

"I'm fine, let's check this out." There still wasn't anyone around so we quickly checked out the case. All that was inside was a tape.

"We came all this way for a tape?" It seemed rather strange to me, having us come all they way out here for a simple tape.

"Doesn't matter now, so let's get out of here." Grabbing the case, we hurried back to the car, deciding we'd watch the tape when we got back to the apartment.

I wasn't sure what we were going to find on the tape, but I didn't expect that. It was of Alex and Seth; they were investigating an old abandon building. Everything seemed to be ok, but the further we got into the tape more and more static and distortion appeared. It suddenly cut to Alex alone in a house; acting very strangely and talking about how everyone was gone and it was no longer safe. The last thing he said was going to burn all the tapes. It seems we found the very last tape before Alex left and disappeared. As for our next step...I have no idea; the tape didn't give us any useful information that could help us. There were still so many questions, yet no way to answer them; it was anyone's guess what we were going to do next, or what was going to happen.

* * *

**For those of you who are reading and enjoying my story; I'm sorry I haven't updated in a while. College is taking up most of my time plus I have other things going on. I promise I'll try to get these out as fast as I can.**


	6. Back To The House

There are somethings that I didn't really understand about Jay, and this was one of them.

"Now, tell me again what gave you the stupid idea to come back to this house." We were standing by his car, in the driveway of the abandon house.

"I don't want to be here anymore than you do, but we don't have any other options. You know that this is the last choice we have to find out anything, Katie. Besides, it's day time so nothing bad should happen." I wasn't a violent person by nature, but I want to slap Jay up the side of the head; after all that's happened here he still wants to come back.

"I'm not sure what you expect to find this time. The last times didn't give us anything, besides a crazy masked stalker." I said as we made our way to the house. The fact we were going the day did make me feeling better; we were clearly safer doing this stuff in daylight than at night.

"I'm not to sure myself, but we got nothing to lose checking it out again...uh? This is odd..." Jay had tried the front door and unlike the other times it opened.

"Do you think someone's inside?" I peered in through the door; looking for any signs of another person.

"There's only one way to find out." Jay made his way into the house.

"This is a bad idea." I muttered but followed behind him. Despite it being about 1pm it was dark inside. We couldn't get any of the lights to turn on. "Great, the lights aren't working; this is a really bad idea." I was glad we each had a flashlight; the last thing I wanted was to stumble around in the dark. "So where should we look first?"

"Let's check upstairs; we didn't get a chance last time." Jay lead the way upstairs, pausing at the top.

"What is it?"

"That weird doll is up here." He was right; at the top of the stairs was the white doll. It seemed to be pointing to the bathroom. "Do you think it means anything?" I shrugged.

"I'm not sure. Come on, let's check out the bathroom." Jay glanced inside and continued in. From what I could tell nothing was wrong, but Jay was staring at the sink.

"Something wrong?" I asked, peering over his shoulder.

"There was blood the first time I came here, now it's gone."

"Maybe someone cleaned it up."

"But who? No one lives here and I'm pretty sure you and me are the only ones that have been in here."

"Well nothing's in here so let's keep looking before..." I had turned to leave the bathroom when I spotted Masky looking in through the doorway.

"Katie? What's...hey!" Masky ducked away from the door with Jay right behind him.

"Jay, what are you doing!" I quickly followed, catching Jay going into a room at the other end of the hall. Worried he would try something stupid I tried to open the door, which had strangely shut and locked itself. "Jay! Open up!" I pushed on the door, but it wouldn't open. Frustrated that I couldn't get a simple door open; I kicked it, causing it to open. I rushed into the room, only to see that no one was inside. "What the hell is going on here?" There was no way that both Jay and Masky disappeared from this room.

"Katie?" I turned around; Jay had come out of a different room across the hall.

"Jay? But...how did you get in there when you went in there?" Easy to say I was confused.

"I don't know. I chased after him but when I entered the room he had disappeared. I went to leave but I ended up in a different room."

I glanced around the hallway; I noticed the doll had moved yet was still pointing to the bathroom. "I think we need to go back into the bathroom, at least that's the feeling I'm getting." Jay nodded.

"Ok, let's stick to together this time." He lead the way back into the bathroom; the next thing we were in a small closet.

"I'm really getting tired of this teleporting stuff. We should get out of here before something bad happens." Jay shook his head.

"We've come this far, we can't turn back now." I held back a grumble; Jay could be really stubborn about the dangerous things. As we left the closet another door across from us closed, Masky's mask was hanging on the doorknob. Jay opened the open and peered inside but it was too dark to see.

"This is a really really bad idea." I said but Jay didn't seem to hear me. We continued on in, the room seeming a lot bigger than it seemed possible. "Hold on, let me turn on my flashlight; I can't see a thing."

"Good idea." Turing them on; we soon saw that we weren't in the house anymore.

"Where in the world are we?" It looked like we were in an old building of some kind. "Is...is this the building from the video of Alex and Seth?"

"I think it is but how in the world did we end up here?" I couldn't wrap my head around the idea that we had ended up in a completely different building, not to mention that it had somehow become very dark out.

"How long were we in that house? It has to be past 9."

"It wasn't hours I'm sure of that. Come on Katie, let's see what's here."

"Oh sure, let's look around the place where Seth was possibly killed. One of your best ideas every; I can see why the viewers think you're not the smartest person in the world." I said the last part to myself as I followed Jay up the stairs; it might have been a better idea to try to get him to leave. The place looked a lot more run down than it had on the tape. I could hear the wind from outside; chilling the rooms and making everything creak.

"Hello? Anyone here?" There was no response save for his echo. He kept ducking in and out of rooms, like he was searching for something. "Katie, in here." I glanced into the room he had entered; Jay was kneeling down looking at a tunnel of some kind.

"You find something?" As I walked over to him; I felt a headache forming and a cough at the back of my throat. I glanced around the room but saw nothing.

"I think this is the room where Seth disappeared from." I wasn't listening at this point; my headache was getting worse and I collapsed to the ground. "Katie? Katie!" Jay kneeled over me as I had a coughing fit. "Come on, we're getting out of here. Now." As he tried to help me up I spotted Slenderman in the corner.

"J-jay...behind you." My warning came too late; He suddenly was right in front of us. I slipped back onto the floor and saw Jay fall next to me before I blacked out.

_I was back at the forest again. There wasn't anyone around, but I immediately heard little girls laughing. I quickly followed the sound, going deeper into the forest. Soon I came across a field with a swing set, something odd to be in the middle of the forest. The two girls from before were both swinging, having lost the dresses. 'It's you and your cousin Rebecca' I don't know how but the thought popped into my head, but looking at them now it was true._

_"Are you sure he's going to be here Kate?"_

_"Of course Becca, he said he would come back and play." Why in the world was I dreaming this weird stuff, or was it a memory? There was something eerily familiar about these woods. I, or rather, the younger me stopped swinging and began running towards the woods._

_"Come on Becca, he's here!" Rebecca was quick to follow. I made to follow when everything disappeared; I was left along in the field. Looking to see where the girls went I came face to face with Slenderman. I barely had time to scream before falling to the ground with a coughing fit. He reached down for me as I passed out._

I found myself back on Jay's couch, sunlight coming through the windows. I felt sore all over and had a hard time moving.

"Katie!" I turned to see Jay coming out of his room, kneeling by me to give me a tight hug.

"J-Jay, what's wrong?"

"I was so worried, after I read the note I thought..."

"Wait, what note?" He let go of me and reached into his jacket and pulled out a piece of paper.

"When I woke up I found this in my pocket." It didn't say who it was from and it was written in red pen.

IF YOU KEEP MESSING AROUND THOSE MARKS ON HER PRETTY SKIN WILL BECOME MORE PERMANENT

"Marks? What are they..." I noticed something on my wrist. Pulling up the sleeve I soon saw what the note meant. My arm was covered in red marks all the way up to my elbow.

"I think it's just a red sharpie and not..." Jay trailed off but I got what he was saying. A thought occurred to me and I quickly went to the bathroom. "Katie? What's wrong?" I ignored him, pulling my sweatshirt off and confirming what I thought. The marks didn't stop at my elbows; they went all the up to my shoulders and starting across my chest. I lifted up the sides of my shirt and saw that there were marks along my stomach and sides.

"Well...it could be worse." I tried to give a smile to Jay who was standing behind me, but it came out half-hearted. He said nothing but gave me a tight hug from behind. We were both thinking the same thing; that note was a warning that if we kept this up something terrible would happen to me.

"I'm so sorry Kate, I'm sorry that this happened to you." He wouldn't look me in the eye, like this was all his fault.

"Jay, you haven't done anything wrong." I felt his grip around me tighten; this would have been a sweet moment if there wasn't a death threat hanging over my head.

"I got you involved. If I had stopped you none of this would be happening." I said nothing; what could I say? "We need to stop."

"Stop what?"

"This, all of this. We can't keep looking into this stuff where there's a change you'll-" I had to admit I wanted to be done with this too. Masky, Slenderman, everything. I wanted to know what happened to Alex but I wasn't sure if I was willing to risk my life for this.

"I agree; I want to find Alex but...but I can't handle this anymore." Jay looked up at me; understanding in his eyes.

"I know you want to find him; I do too but we won't get anywhere like this. It's best to stop before we loss our sanity, or lives."

* * *

**A reminder that Rebecca belongs to Vixin2. **


	7. Vanished Again

We've been spending a lot more time in the apartment, only leavening for needed items. I've been trying to talk Jay into going to the doctors; neither of us have been feeling good since we came back from the house. Not a day goes by when one of us has a headache or coughing fits; not to mention we're both getting little sleep and our moods, mostly mine, was getting more irritable. He insists that we're both fighting a cold and it's nothing to worry about; probably didn't want to admit something was affecting our health. I spent a few days scrubbing off the marks; besides nearly rubbing my skin off there wasn't anything bad about them. There wasn't any other threats made for either of us, which calmed my nerves a bit but it did little to Jay. He spends most of his time going over the surveillance footage from the cameras around the apartment. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't worried at all; all he seems to do is watch the tapes, assuring himself that nothing is coming after us. I wonder if this was how Alex acted when no one else was around; always checking to see if that creature was following him.

"I'm heading to bed, are you going to stay up?" Jay had been looking through last nights footage while I was checking the YouTube and Twitter accounts.

"No, I'm going to sleep."

"Ok, see you in the morning."

"Night Jay." He went into his room and closed the door, leaving me along. I shut down my laptop, worn down from the lack of sleep. I checked to make sure the camera was recorded, taking comfort that something was keeping an eye on me. I laid down and pulled the blanket up to my chin, hoping I'd get more than a few hours of sleep.

I awoke some hours later; I could of swore there was someone standing over me. For a second I thought someone was in the corner but another look showed there wasn't anyone in the living room.

"Calm down Katie, you're over imaging things." I heard a door close; it was in the apartment but I didn't know which. "Jay, that you?" No response. I walked over to his door, trying to hear inside; the whole apartment was quite. I peered inside to make sure he was ok. I was surprised and frustrated to see yet again Jay had disappeared.

"For the love...this can't be happening again!" This was the second time he had vanished without me knowing. "Why...why does this keep happening to us? I thought we were done with this crap!" I kicked the wall in my brief rage; being angry wasn't going to help but I was mad that something kept messing around with us. I heard some footsteps near the front door; peering out I didn't see anyone around but I still held my guard up. "Is someone here?" No response; I slowly made my way out into the living room, listening for more noises. "Huh, guess I must have imagine- ahh!" Someone tackled me to the ground, knocking the wind out of me. I managed to squirm out from under them, only pausing to see Masky was my attacker. I made a break for the door but he grabbed my leg, causing me to fall again. Before I had time to get back up he pulled me back towards him. I tried to push and kick him off but he held my arms above my head and pinned my legs between his.

"Get off of me you freak! What do you want with us?!" He simply stared at me; that mask and him not making a sound made him seem almost unreal. "Where's Jay? What did you do with him?!" Still not a peep from him. I faintly caught a smell from him; it was...cigarette smoke? With a free hand he reached into his pocket and pulled out a small knife; I tried again to get him off but stopped when he pressed the knife against my neck. "Please, please don't kill me." I closed my eyes, hoping he wouldn't hurt me. My mind flashed back to the note Jay got; I prayed he wasn't about to keep that promise. I felt the knife leave, I thought I was free before his hands replaced it. "Ack...ugh..." I could barely make a sound as I tried to free my neck. He was a lot stronger than I first thought; I could barely move his hands. Darkness was creeping into my vision as I tried one last time to pull him off, only to end up passing out.

"Wake up, Katie. Come on, wake up!" Someone was shaking my shoulder. I blinked a few times, shielding my eyes from the bright light.

"Uhh...Jay? Where..." My voice cracked and my throat felt very dry. I slowly sat up; my whole body hurt from being thrown and laying on the floor all night.

"I woke up a few minutes ago and found you on the floor. What happened last night?"

"What happened was you disappeared again and Masky attacked me."

"Wait, he was here? He broke into the apartment?"

"Well I certainly didn't let the creep in." I pulled myself up in to a chair; I've must of hit the floor harder than I first thought. Jay had went back into his room, probably getting his security camera.

"I'm going to check exactly what happened last night. Are you sure you're ok?" He asked grabbing the camera for the living room.

"I'm fine, just sore and really thirsty." I helped myself to some water while Jay looked over the tapes from his room and the living room. I took some aspirin as well; I couldn't stop my body from aching but I could stop my head. "You find anything?" I asked once my voice was somewhat back to normal.

"Yeah it's...well, I'm not sure how to explain this; I get up and leave my room but I never come out the door."

"You did what?" I went to watch the tape with him; sure enough, Jay left his room but never came out into the living room. "That's odd to say the least, anything else?"

"I found when the masked guy attacked you; seems like he was watching you before." It was about 10 minutes after Jay disappeared when there was some movement behind the couch. You could faintly make out his mask as he watched me sleep. He moved out of the camera shot after a couple of minutes and a few seconds later I woke up, everything else happening like I remembered it.

"I can't believe that freak was watching me sleep." I was angry, but also scared; who knows what he could of done while I was asleep. "So now what are we going to do? We lock all the doors and windows yet he keeps getting in. We might as well board up everything."

"That might be our only choice." We were both at a lost on what to do, knowing that Masky could break in anytime. "I think it might be best if we get out of here, hide somewhere. Who knows, as long as we don't stay in one place for too long he might not find us." I wasn't too big on the whole hiding thing but it was better than staying here.

"I'm willing to do anything to get away from this guy; I don't know much more of this I can take."

"Same here, hopefully things will die down soon if we can get rid of this guy."


	8. Tape From Alex

Nothing else big or strange happened over the weeks; Masky didn't come back and Jay didn't disappear again. Maybe things had finally stopped after all, but my hope didn't last long; someone had hacked into the YouTube account and uploaded a video called Entry ######. It was...well, I'm not really sure what to call it; it seemed to be made by totheark and Masky was in it. In short, it was pretty creepy and I got the feeling it spooked Jay. Not long after the video went up he insisted we get out of town. His sudden desire worried me but I didn't want to stay here any longer either. We've spent most of our time in a hotel some ways away from town; Jay also insisted that we share a room with two beds at my request. It would've been awkward, at least for me, with my crush on him; Jay tended to be obvious to these things. Nothing happened while we were here, though there were a few times where one of us awoke to a noise, but the camera we set up showed nothing going on. Everything was starting to calm down again until one day. We were held up in the hotel room, we agreed that it would be best if we stayed inside as much as we could but it was boring just to sit in this room all day. I had gone out to grab a snack from the vending machine; when I came back Jay was facing the T.V. with the news on, his face looking pale and upset.

"Something up Jay?"

"Yeah, it's... well it'll be better if you watch this." I sat down next to him on his bed, leaning in the watch what he had recorded on the camera. It was a news report about an apartment fire; it was empty at the time and the cause was unknown.

"Jay...isn't that your apartment?"

"Yeah, it is." I had a feeling this wasn't an accident, but who would set Jay's apartment on fire and why?

"Why did they do this? Who did this?" He shook his head, at a lost for an idea.

"No idea; might've been ToTheArk or even that masked man. Who ever it was might be trying to scare us or who knows what." He held his face in his hands; I didn't know what to say or do. I was good at raising people's spirits up when down, but after what we've been through I wasn't sure I could even raise my own.

"Well it wasn't to kill us or they would've done it earlier. I think they're trying to send us a message, though I'm not sure what." Jay said nothing, just kept staring at the floor. "Jay? I think we should do something about this, don't you?'

"...Yeah, I guess. Just... just give me some time." Even since the news report things haven't been going well for us, mainly Jay. There are times where he stays up all night, looking at the tapes from the security camera. He's trying to hide it from me, waiting till I fall asleep, but I haven't been sleeping well myself. Neither of us can sleep; there's this feeling that someone is watching us, and I think it's starting to get to both of us. There are times where I stay up with him; not to watch the tapes but to be with him because I don't want to be alone with my dreams. I'm having the dreams of being in the woods more, but these are a bit different. One is I don't see anyone or anything; I'm just walking through the woods, sometimes during the day or around twilight. Nothing else strange had happened to us, but that didn't stop us from changing hotels now and then. A few weeks after the news report Jay received a strange text from an unknown number, all it said was 41810; we figured it was an upcoming date which was two weeks away. We weren't sure what was going to happen but we decided to leave our current hotel; but not before getting a package that only contained a single tape with the words WATCH THIS written on it. Some information was blacked out so we couldn't tell who had send it, leave us no choice but to watch the tape in hopes to get some sort of clue. The tape started out with random clips of Alex and someone wearing a skull mask. A sudden cut shown someone filming in a kitchen then them walking down a hallway, turning the camera around briefly to show us a blonde haired girl. What was surprising to me was that she was living with Alex; all this time I had no idea if he was ok and there he was, living a life with who I presumed to be his girlfriend. My happiness didn't last long when the creature appeared and chased them out of the house. I was speechless; I didn't if I should be happy Alex was alive or worried that the creature had found him.

"So what do we do now? Alex is still alive but we don't know where he is. He's ok if he sent us the tape but I'm scared he might be in trouble." There was no hiding the fact that I was worried that the strange creature had found Alex.

"I'm not really sure what to do at this point." Jay put an arm around me and pulled me closer, trying to comfort me.

"But we have to do something! Alex could be in danger." Jay was silent for a moment, taking another look at the packages return address.

"I know what we're going to do." He gave me a kiss on the cheek and a reassuring smile. "We're going to find Alex and help him as best we can."

_I found myself in a forest again, from what I could tell it was late afternoon. As I started my way down a trail I could make a song that sound a little familiar. _

_Come little children, I'll take thee away_

_into a land of enchantment_

_Come little children, the time's come to play_

_here in my garden of shadows_

_I went off the trail; trying to find the haunting melody. It was almost like the song was luring me deeper into the forest , away from the safe edge and the light._

_Follow sweet children, I'll show thee the way_

_through all the pain and the sorrows_

_Weep not poor children, for life is this way_

_murdering beauty and passions_

_I continued farther into the dark woods, my mind a complete blank with the only thought of reaching the source. Though the song wasn't the most pleasant I felt no fear; a strange calm was surrounding me. _

_Hush now dear children, it must be this way_

_to weary of life and deceptions_

_Rest now my children, for soon we'll away_

_into the calm and the quiet_

_Come little children, I'll take thee away _

_into a land of enchantment_

_Come little children, the time's come to play_

_here in my garden of shadows_

_I finally reached a meadow where the source of the song was coming from, but I was surprised at what I found. Sitting in the middle was two little girls, Rebecca and myself, along with an older girl; who looked to be in her early twenties. The girl's back was to me but I could tell she was wearing a long white dress that was ripped at the end; she was also the source of the singing. Rebecca and my younger self were captivated by her song, though they had a blank look on their face. Suddenly they disappeared, leave me with the other girl. I quickly made my way over to her, stopping just a little bit behind her. She slowly stood up and turned towards me and I'm pretty sure I could feel my blood turn cold. I couldn't believe it but it was true, the girl was me; her skin was pale, her eyes blank and she had a haunted look._

"_Wha? But... how could you be..." She said nothing but gave me a sad smile._

"_You can't escape, no one can once he finds you. There's no point in resisting; you'll only hurt yourself and those you care about." With that she disappeared, leaving the tall man in her place. _

"_No... no no no!" I could barely scream before I blacked out. _

I slowly opened my eyes; the first thing I noticed was the room I was in was fairly dark, the only light coming from a laptop and a TV. It appeared to be a hotel room, but I couldn't remember how I got here. Everything seemed fine, except my head felt fuzzy and disoriented. I felt a creek on the bed; I looked over to see Jay sitting up, looking out of it himself.

"Jay?" I tried to sit up, feeling for any injuries which thankfully there were none.

"Katie? Are you ok?" He moved to sit on my side of the bed, helping me up and making sure I was ok.

"Yeah, I'm fine." I moved to sit next to him, looking around the hotel room. "Jay," I asked "Do you know where we are?"

"I was about to ask you that."

* * *

**The song is a poem called Come Little Children. If you want to hear an amazing version check out katethegreat19's, you can imagine this is how Katie sounds singing it. Link to song:** /watch?v=MKlsUrfbiE0


	9. New Surroundings

_"_Are you telling me it's been 7 months since the last entry was uploaded?!" After waking up in a strange hotel room, we soon discovered neither of us remembered the last 7 months.

"It looks like it; the last thing I remembering doing is going out to the return address from the box we got." I nodded, it wasn't like I could forget what was on that tape.

"This is crazy... how can we forget so much time?" I was still trying to wrap my head around all of this, it just didn't seem real.

"It's beyond me too. I'm also wondering where this came from." Jay held up a chest camera; we didn't have it when we received the tape and neither of us had seen it before.

"Maybe we got it during the missing 7 months." It was silent for a few moments, each of us lost in our thoughts. "So what do you think we should do now?"

"It might be a good idea to check the area, see if we can recognize anything." I nodded.

"Sounds like a good idea to me." Taking the chest cam with us we headed out of the hotel; I noticed that there weren't many cars in the parking lot, I was expecting more with it being around the holidays. We spend a couple of hours driving around the town, trying to see if we could recognize anything. It provided little help; we still had no idea where we were. We headed back to the hotel after we gave up on our search, Jay quickly stopped by the front desk.

"It looks like we only booked the room for the night." He said when he returned to his car where I was waiting.

"Just a night? Kinda odd it was just a single night."

"Yeah, I extended it while we figure out what to do next."

"Good idea." As we made our way back to our room, we passed a girl who looked to be about our age. I watched her head down the stairs when a thought came to mind. "Do you find it odd that there's almost no one staying at this hotel besides us?"

"Well now that you mention it, yeah it is. There's staff here but almost no one else."

"And that girl...I think she has a room right next to ours." Jay paused opening the door to look at me.

"Really? That means our rooms our connected. Why would they do that, unless you know her." I shook my head.

"I've never seen her before. You?"

"Same. Maybe they made a mistake or something." No, this couldn't be a mistake. If it was we would have told the hotel and one of us would be moved, yet it seems that it hasn't been brought up by us or the girl. There was something else going on here but we have more pressing matters to worry about, namely where we are and what happened during the last 7 months.

"So what should we do now?" I asked sitting down on the bed. Jay took off the chest camera before answering.

"We should look around the room, see what we can find."

"Good idea." We started looking around the room; all the drawers were empty, even the ones in the desk and the nightstand. There were two bags next to the T.V, each belonging to one of us. "I got some clothes and a flashlight. Anything in yours Katie?"

"Clothes and a flashlight too. Also some sort of pills." Jay pulled out a pill bottle with orange pills in it.

"That's ibuprofen, painkillers. The bottle's almost empty; why would we need these?"

"No idea, there's also a key in here." He handed me a key from one of the bag's pockets. There were no marks and there wasn't anything special about it; it looked like an ordinary key. "What do you think it goes to?"

"Hard to say, it's not like it's labeled or anything. For all I know it can go to anything and it's going to be pretty hard trying to figure out what that is."

"You're probably right, I'm going to hold on to it for now." I handed him back the key and he added it to his key ring. "Anything else we should check?"

"Well there's no room under the bed so we can't look there but there is a safe under the nightstand." I pointed over my shoulder to where the safe was sitting.

"Have you tried putting in anything?"

"No yet; it looks like the code is 4 digits. What should we try?"

"There's no limit to what it could be..." Jay moved over to sit in front of the safe; he handed me the camera that he'd been filming with, I sat on the bed next to him. He tried 4 different codes, none of which worked. After the last one the safe locked itself, preventing us from trying new codes for 15 minutes.

"Well that was helpful; it's going to take us forever to figure out what the code is." Jay nodded.

"Yeah we might have to hold off on this for a while."

"What's left to do then?" Jay sat back on his heels, thinking for a moment.

"Not much but I guess we should stay here for a while, see what happens."

"Chances are it won't be good." I said to myself, knowing the outcome of how this might end. "There's one other thing." Jay glanced up at me. "There's only one bed and two of us..." I could feel the blush on my cheeks growing; Jay caught on and his face turned red as well.

"Oh, umm... I-I'm sure we can figure out something." I just nodded; thinking that tonight was going to be interesting.

Over the next couple of days we looked over inch of the hotel room, seeing if we might have missed something. It gave as much help as the safe; besides our bags with what we brought there wasn't anything else in the room. With nothing to go on all we could do was try to get the safe open; there had to be something in there that could shed more light on our situation. We've been spending most of our time in the room; Jay's been looking through his laptop to see if there was anything hidden on it. I've been trying to unlock the safe, which was easier said than done; I could only think of so many 4 digit combinations that had some meaning to one of us. It was really frustrating me that I couldn't get anywhere on the safe. We also had to stay in the same room because of the safe, which meant we had to share a bed. It was uncomfortable sleeping in the same bed but neither of us wanted to make the other sleep on the floor so it left us with one choice. We agreed to sleep on top of the covers so it wouldn't be as awkward but that still didn't stop me from going to sleep with a blushing face.

_Great; I've lost the past 7 months from my memory, I'm in an unfamiliar place and all my mind can think of is I'm sleeping in the same bed as Jay. Clearly I have my priorities straight._

A few days after we awoke in the hotel Jay suggested we take another look around the town. I agreed; wanting to do something else besides staying in the room. He strapped on the chest camera before leaving. As we left our room we walked by the girl we've seen early.

"What's that?" She asked passing us.

"What's what?"'Jay asked her.

"What's under your jacket?" She indicated to the camera sticking out from Jay's jacket.

"Oh, it's a camera."

"What's it for?" I found it a little odd and awkward she was asking us these things but she might have been trying to make small talk.

"You know, uh, for making videos." He looked a little uncomfortable talking to her; then again I was too, especially if some random person asked all these questions after what we've been through. "Uhh I'm- I mean we're" He pointed to me "We're making a... a documentary." Documentary; where did that come from? At least it's better than telling her what's really going on.

"Oh, so what's it about?" Me and Jay quickly shared a look.

"Hotels; it's a documentary on hotels." I said the first thing that came to mind; not the best but hopefully she'd buy it.

"Oh, makes sense." She smiled, believing our cover story. "I'm Jessica by the way." She held out her hand.

"Jay, Jay McCaffrey.(1) This is Katie Hawkins."

"It's nice to meet you." I said shaking her hand.

"McCaffrey? Hawkins?" She looked like she was trying to remember something.

"Something wrong? I asked.

"Oh, it's nothing. You're names sound familiar."

"Yeah, I guess they are common." Jay gave a nervous laugh. There was a small awkward silence. "Any way we uh, we got to get going."

"Oh, of course. It was nice meeting you guys."

"You too." Jessica headed to her room while we continued down the hallway. "Well that was... interesting?" Jay sounded like he wasn't sure what to think.

"She was probably trying to be friendly; she might be the kind of person to greet strangers."

"That wasn't a greeting, it was more like curiosity but I get you're point. Do you find it odd that she recognized our names?"

"Yeah, it looked like she was trying to remember something. Maybe we really did meet her at some point." I shrugged my shoulders.

"There's a chance; the memory loss doesn't help with trying to recall." After the encounter with Jessica we looked around the town a bit more, but there wasn't anything new that we could find. I was getting frustrated that we couldn't find a single clue as to where we are or what happened; I felt lost as to what to do next. We had little choice; all we could do was keeping waiting to see what would happen.

* * *

**(1) Since Jay's last name is never given and from what I can tell in the video it starts off with Mc, I gave him one that fit.**


	10. New Video and New Lies

"So, tell me about this video you found?" It had been some days since we meet Jessica. During that time Jay had been looking through his laptop, trying to see if there was anything new or hidden. I had given up on the safe; aside from breaking it we weren't going to open it any time soon. Jay did manage to find a video hidden away; it was called 'noentry'. It was of someone running through some woods, it never showed the person holding the camera. Near the end of the video they entered a tunnel, from the looks of it someone had been attacked there. The footage ended with Slenderman appearing at the end of the tunnel. "So, any idea where this came from?" I asked Jay.

"Not a clue; I don't remember putting this on here, then again I could of added it during the missing months." He was right about that.

"Let's say you did record it, maybe those woods are around here."

"Could be, we're gonna have to look around to see if there are any woods near here. Unless we can get that safe open this is our only lead." It went silent of a few moments. "How are you feeling?" Jay suddenly asked me.

"Ok I guess, why?" I was a little confused by his sudden question. He moved to sit next to me on the bed.

"There's...there's something I've been meaning to tell you for some time. I guess this whole situation made me realize that," He paused, taking a deep breath."I realize how much you mean to me and how much I care for you. I guess what I'm trying to say is that I like you Katie."

"Jay..." I was a little speechless; I had no idea Jay felt that way about me. Truth be told I was beyond happy, surprised but happy.

"I know this isn't the best time and I don't even know if you feel the same way-" I silenced him with a quick kiss on the lips. It was his turn to be speechless; I couldn't help but smile.

"Does that answer your question?" He smiled back at me and for the first time it felt like nothing was wrong.

"Yes, it does." He leaned forward to kissed me again, I was a little surprised but I soon returned it. His kiss was sweet and gentle, like him. I wrapped my arms around his neck to pull him closer; this was perfect and I didn't want it to end. I fell back onto the bed, Jay on top of me and our lips still locked. He used his hand and arm to support his weight while his other hand was tracing up and down my side. When we were forced to part for air I couldn't help but smile at him.

"How long have you been meaning to tell me that?" I asked once I regained my breath.

"I've kinda had a crush on you since the film; I never said anything because I thought Alex wouldn't like it if I went after his younger cousin. You're practically his second sister."

"That's true." I chuckled a little. "Truth is I've liked you since then too; I was worried that you wouldn't like me in return."

"Well there's no need to worry now is there?" With a smile he pulled me up with him, causing me to end up sitting in his lap. I moved to get off but he wrapped his arms around my waist tight. He buried his head in the crook of my neck. "I just wanted you to know that, in case something happens to us. I don't want to take the chance of losing you and never tell my feelings for you." I smiled at him and gave him a kiss on the cheek.

"I'm glad you did tell, whether something happens to us or not."

"I'm sure we'll be ok; we've been alright since we woke up here." I wouldn't say it out loud, but I wasn't sure I fully believed Jay's statement.

Some days later Jay ran out to get us some supplies; we weren't leaving the hotel much and this made it easier. I would of went too only when I woke up I felt terrible; I was running a fever, my head was pounding and I felt like I was going to be sick. Jay insisted I stay to rest while he ran out, saying he'll get me some medicine. I spent most of the time sleeping, or trying to whenever my head would stop pounding. Sometime later I woke up to the door opening; I could hear Jessica outside talking.

"So are you some kind of hotel hermit?"

"A what?" I chuckled a little; I walked over to him to help with the bags and before he said something he'd regret later.

"A hermit. Most people don't bring groceries to hotels."

"Y-yeah I guess not..." Jay gave nervous chuckle. Jessica smiled a little at his comment.

"What are you guys doing here; you've been here for awhile." I glanced at Jay; we hadn't planned our cover story but then again we weren't expecting to be asked.

"Umm...it's our house." Jessica gave a confused look.

"The hotel is your house?"

"N-no, the house is being renovated. We're staying here till it's fixed."

"Yeah, these things can take some time." I said smiling, going along with Jay's idea.

"Oh, so are you two a couple?" If I didn't believe my face could turn red in a second I was proven wrong. "I know it's rude of me to ask but I just assumed since...well, the rooms only have one bed..." I could tell Jessica felt a little awkward asking us but not as bad as we felt.

"Uhh...well, y-yeah we are." Jay tried his best to smile casually, throwing an arm around my shoulder while I stared at the floor beat red.

"Ah, I figured as much." We all stood there for an awkward moment.

"So what are you doing here? You've been here as long as us." I asked wanting to change the subject.

"I uh, I got kicked out. I'm staying here till I find a new place." I wasn't sure but I got the feeling Jessica wasn't very comfortable talking about this.

"You got kicked out? What happened?" She bit her lip at Jay's question, looking away from us.

"I don't want to talk about it."

"Oh, that's-that's fine. Well..." Jessica cut him off before he could continue.

"I have to get going to work so if you don't mind...?"

"Oh, of course. Thanks for the help."

"No problem." She left and headed back to her room.

"Well that was interesting." I said following Jay back into the room.

"Yeah, especially when she asked if we were a couple." My face suddenly became red and I looked away from him.

"Well...are we?"

"Huh?" I walked back over to him, sighing a little; Jay had to be clueless at the worst moments

"Are we a couple? I know it's not the best time but..." I stared at my feet, unable to look him in the eye. He was silent for a few moments; I was starting to worry when he suddenly wrapped his arms round me, pulling me close to him.

"I'd like nothing more than that." He said, kissing me on the cheek causing me to blush even more.

"I'd like it too." I pulled him down to kiss him again, his arms tighten around my waist. "One thing though." I said breaking the kiss. Jay looked a little disappointed I broke away.

"What's wrong?" I chuckled at his expression.

"Can I have the medicine for my headache first?"

I was awoken later that night to the sound of loud banging.

"Jay? You hear that?" I turned to him; he had awoken to the noise as well.

"Yeah, I think it's coming from Jessica's room." He got out of bed to grab the camera.

"Are you sure it's from her? Maybe it's someone outside." I followed him as he made his way to the door separating the two rooms.

"Only one way to find out." He knocked on the door, we heard more banging before the door opened.

"What is it?" Jessica sounded tired and frustrated we woke her up.

"Is everything ok in there?"

"Yeah." She looked confused by Jay's question.

"We uhh, we heard noises and we thought they were coming from your room."

"Well it wasn't me; I just woke, and why is there a camera in my face?" It was clear she was starting to get ticked off by our questions.

"I-I was recording something when I heard the noise..." She sighed and shook her head.

"I'm just going back to bed." Her door closed without another word to us.

"Told you it wasn't her, but you just had to wake her up."

"I think there's more to it. She's hiding something." He said placing the camera back on the tripod.

"Hiding something? What could she possibly be hiding, Jay?"

"I'm not sure, we should try talking to her later."

"Right but for now I'm going back to bed, it's late enough as it is." I laid back down on the bed. "So, any plans for tomorrow?" He sat down next to me, kissing my forehead lightly.

"I think we should start looking for the area in Entry 29, it's the only lead we got."

* * *

**My first (kinda) romance scene, don't expect more or anything big any time soon; as you can tell I'm not very good at this kind of thing. Also, thank you to all who are reading my first story, I really appreciate it :)**


	11. Rosswood Park

Over the next several days we looked around the town for anything that might lead us to the place in Entry 29. We eventually found a fairly large park not far from the hotel called Rosswood; the front part was a regular park while many trails where further back.

"Do you think this might be the place? I mean, it is the only park near here that has trails like in the video." I asked Jay at the start of one of the trails.

"Don't really know, we just have to look around to find out." Easier said than done; there were a lot of trails and they all were interconnected.

"This is going to be fun." I muttered, following Jay down a random trail. Since there wasn't any clue as to where the entry was filmed we decided to pick a trail and hope it was the right one. We were quiet for a while, Jay was filming and I was lost in my thoughts. The forest wasn't too dense; it reminded me of the forest in my dreams, which I strangely hadn't had a single one since we awoke in the hotel. I was brought back to reality when I heard a branch break behind us. Glancing back, I saw a man wearing a dark blue hoodie some yards behind us. He was looking at the ground and seemed completely unaware of what was going on around him, or so it seemed. I couldn't place it, but there was something off about him. "Jay, there's someone behind us." He looked back as well, spotting the man. He too caught my unease about the man.

"Let's keep some ways away from him, till we know if he's really following is." We spent several minutes walking through the woods, glancing back every now and then. There were a few times the trail branched off but he kept to the same one as us.

"He's still behind us, maybe he's just-ahh!" Before I could finish Jay grabbed my arm and pulled me behind one of the trees. I was about to yell at him when he shushed me, using the camera to look around the tree. The man continued on passed us, unaware that we had left the trail.

"I think we're ok now." He made his way back to the trail, looking down the path at the man. I glared at him, punching him in the arm. "Oww! What was that for?"

"You could've warned me before dragging me behind a tree. That wasn't necessary."

"Sorry, I just didn't want to take any chances. We don't know who we can trust." I simply sighed.

"It's ok, let's keep moving." I wasn't really mad at Jay, more at myself; I couldn't believe I had gotten paranoid over some random guy in the woods. Jay didn't seemed bothered by this, or aware; this whole thing was really affecting us. We spent more time walking through the woods, alot of the trails were almost gone and hard to walk through. "I haven't seen anything that looks like Entry 29; maybe this isn't the right place."

"You may be right..." Jay turned around, freezing on something.

"Jay? What is it?"

"Up there, on the hill." I followed his gaze, standing at the top of a hill was the man we saw enter the woods with us. "Need to check..." Jay muttered as he started his way up the hill towards the man.

"What are you doing? Do you really need to bother a random guy?" I quickly followed behind him, mumbling how dumb Jay could be sometime.

"Excuse me." The man ignored Jay's call. From what I could tell he was messing with something in his hand. "Hello?" Still nothing; Jay tapped the man on the shoulder. "Excuse me." The man turned around, pulling out an earbud.

"Can I help you?" I didn't recognize the man, by the looks neither did Jay.

"Umm, No. Thought you were someone else."

"Sorry to bother you." I added. The man nodded.

"Alright then." He continued on down the trail, glancing back at us.

"Well that wasn't awkward at all. He probably thinks we're weird or something." Jay simply shrugged.

"Come on, I think we've been here long enough. Let's head back to the hotel."

"Good idea, it's getting cold and I didn't bring a heavy jacket." I suddenly sneezed, emphasizing my point. Jay chuckled, throwing an arm around me.

"Don't worry Katie, I'll keep you warm." I couldn't help but laugh.

"Well aren't you a charmer." He smiled, kissing my cheek.

"That's what they tell me."

As we made our way back to our room, Jay paused outside Jessica's door.

"Something up Jay?"

"I want to try to talk to Jessica again." He knocked on her door.

"Are you sure that's a good idea, she didn't sound very happy with us last time."

"Couldn't hurt to try." He knocked a second time. Jessica opened the door, her expression told me this was a bad idea.

"What do you want?" She was clearly annoyed.

"Well...umm, this might sound weird but do you know anything about the parks around here?"

"Parks? There are a few around here, any in particular?"

"It's the one off of...um, something with Rosswood."

"The park is called Rosswood Park. Have you heard of it before?" I asked her. She thought for a moment.

"I might have been there when I was little but I can't remember."

"Nothing at all?" Jay was starting to push Jessica too much, with the glare she was giving us.

"I said I don't know, why are you guys asking?"

"We-we just got here so we're looking for a good area to look for an apartment."

"You just got here?" Jessica looked confused.

"Yeah, my job relocated me and now we're looking for a-" Job relocated? That's not what we said last time. Jessica caught Jay's lie as well.

"You said you're house was being renovated." There was an awkward pause between us; I looked at Jay, unsure what to say myself.

"N-no I didn't. Why would I say that?"

"Yes you did."

"You must of misheard me then."

"No I didn't." Jessica was getting more annoyed.

"...Nevermind, we're obviously bothering you. We're just going to go back to our room." We started our way back.

"Wait." Jessica stopped us.

"What is it?" I noticed that Jessica's attitude had changed; she seemed calmer, almost concerned.

"Have you guys been feeling alright?" Me and Jay shared a glance, an odd question.

"Yeah, why?" Jay sounded as confused as I felt.

"Nothing's wrong or anything?"

"I haven't been sleeping that well, but I never sleep well in hotels."

"Same with me." I added. She nodded, still looking a bit off.

"You too haven't been having any kind of memory loss or anything?" I gasped a little, Jay was a bit stunned before answering.

"No, neither of us have."

"Alright then." She headed back to her room without another word.

"Sleeping well? Any kind of memory loss? I knew she was hiding something." I said once we got back in our room. "No one just asks questions like that if they're not experiencing it themselves."

"You're right, there is something up with her but I don't think she's in the mood to talk to us for awhile."

"Another thing; what's with changing our story? I thought we said our house was being renovated, then you come up with a whole new lie." Jay let out a long sigh, sitting on the bed.

"I-I didn't remember, I couldn't remember what we said."

"You mean you're having more memory loss?" I sat down next to him.

"With somethings but yeah, I think I am. It's like I blackout or something; one minute I'm working on my laptop, then suddenly I'm laying down in bed." He turned to me. "Has this been happening to you?" I bit my lip and looked away from him.

"Every now and then, mostly at night. I'd be up doing something, next thing I know I'm waking up in the middle of the night. I thought I was really tired but I was never sure." Jay pulled me closer, wrapping his arms around me. "I'm a little scared; I don't understand why this is happening, I just don't understand."

"I don't know either; I'm wondering the same thing. We're fine right now, nothing bad has happened while we've been here," He placed a kiss on my temple. "Everything is going to be alright." Despite how much I wanted too, I wasn't sure how much longer that would last.


	12. Out of Time

The next few days were calm for us; we didn't talk to Jessica again and she seemed to be avoiding us. Despite the calm I was having a hard time sleeping. I kept waking up in the middle of the night for some reason; I wasn't having any dreams, then again I couldn't remember if I had any. Jay would be asleep next to me so it wasn't him and I'm pretty sure a noise didn't wake me else Jay would be up too. The lack of sleep was really starting to get to me and I wasn't sure how much longer I could stand it. One night Jay checking things on his laptop while I was trying to catch up on my sleep when we heard a knock on the door connecting to Jessica's room.

"Wonder what she wants." Jay grabbed the camera before opening the door, it probably wasn't a good idea to use the it but Jay insisted we needed to record everything. The first thing I noticed about her when the door opened was how worried she looked, which quickly became annoyed when she saw the camera.

"What are you doing?"

"Just um, just seeing who was at the door." It was easy to tell Jay felt uncomfortable, he wasn't alone.

"With a camera?" I narrowed my eyes a bit at Jessica; there was something weird about how she was acting..

"W-well I had the camera already and...and we were just filming..."

"Look Jay!" Her sudden tone change startled me. "I know you and Katie are lying. First it's a story about some hotel documentary, then you say your house is being renovated and then you told me your job was being relocated! What is going on?!" Her voice rose at she went on, I thought sure was going to start yelling at us.

"Well it's...it's kinda complicated..." I tried to tell her but it wasn't exactly easy to explain.

"You two aren't acting like normal people."

"Why do you care? You're just some random stranger we just met." Jay retorted back at her. Jessica glanced away from us, fear becoming plain on her face.

"I-I think there's something going on here; there has to be."

"Like what?" Jay's tone softened upon seeing her expression change.

"I don't know how I got here! You two are the only ones I've seen besides the hotel staff and we have connecting rooms. I don't even know you guys, like you said we're strangers!" She was trying hard to control her emotions, "Have you had memory loss or anything?" She glanced back into her room again; was there something in there? It was hard to tell with the little amount of light. "I think I'm going crazy... I'm losing huge chunks of time! I keep have terrible headaches and coughing fits. I can hardly sleep and when I do I think I'm sleep walking, and- and I keep having these dreams where I'm a kid and someone is watching me-"

"Stop." Jay cut her off before she could continue. Jessica looked so close to tears I couldn't help but feel sorry for her. All this time she was going through the same things as us and we had no idea.

"What?" I looked at Jay, already know what he was thinking. He looked at me and I nodded, ready to come clean.

"Look Jessica, we'll tell you everything, but just... give us a bit, to figure somethings out; we'll be in there soon. You should probably start packing up 'cause we're going to have to leave tonight." Jessica nodded, a very small smile on her face. She seemed to have calmed down a bit from before. Leaving her to pack up we went back to our room to do the same.

"So how much are we going to tell her?" I asked stuffing what few things we had into our bags.

"Not really sure, the basic stuff really; how this started and some of the things that happened to us." Jay was busy typing on his laptop, probably uploading what just happened. Checking to see if I missed anything, my eyes landed on the safe.

"We never did figure out the safe."

"Yeah but it's too late now, unless you have any last-minute ideas." I waited while Jay finished editing and uploading the video. "You ready?" He asked grabbing his bag and the camera.

"Yeah, let's get this over with."

"Jessica?" Jay called knocking on her door. "Jessica, you in there?" Still no response.

"She couldn't have left, we told her we were going to meet up." Jay slowly opened the door and glanced inside.

"She's not here." Opening the door all the way I saw that he was right; her room was completely empty, if it wasn't for the messy bed it would've looked like no one had stayed in here.

"This is strange; where did she go... find something Jay?" I noticed him pick something off the ground.

"It's a combination." He held up a piece of paper with the numbers '1102' written on it, what was a little creepy was the 0 had an X through it.

"Think it belongs to her safe?" Jessica's room had a small safe as well.

"Only one way to find out." Inputting the numbers, we got an error message. "Darn, it's not right. I wonder if it's ours..." Jay headed back to our room, typing the numbers in our safe; this time it opened.

"Tapes?" The safe was filled with at least a dozen or so of them. "Why in the world did we put tapes in the safe."

"We can worry about that later, we have other things to worry about." Jay began stuffing the tapes into his bag. I glanced back to another room, I could've sworn I heard something coming from there. "Got 'em, now to figure out-"

"Jay!" I had turned to look back at Jessica's room again when I saw Masky run out at us. He pushed me aside and ran straight for Jay.

"Run Katie!" I hurried into Jessica's room, turning to see Jay hit him with the flashlight. "Keep moving." He slammed the connected door shut before leading me out into the hall. Our door opened and Masky darted out. "Go go go!" Jay was nearly pushing me down the hall, I glanced back one more time before running down the stairs; there was something off about the masked man but now wasn't the time to think about it. Once we were out of the building we made a mad dash for the car, throwing our bags in the back and locking our doors. Jay started up his car and we nearly speeded out of the parking lot; looking back Masky had not followed us out of the building. The farther we got away from the hotel the more relaxed we became, though I could still feel my heart pounding in my chest. Jay pulled into a parking lot for a school, we both needed to catch our breaths. "Are you ok?" He asked me, his hands shaking from the adrenaline rush.

"Yeah, are you." He nodded; we were more frightened than anything else. "How do you think he found us?"

"No idea, we were there for a few months so it probably wasn't hard to find us." We sat in silence for a few minutes.

"So what do we do now?"

"First," Jay said starting up the car again, "is to get away from. Second is to look at the tapes we found. We might find out how we ended up at the hotel."

"Just what we need, more tapes."

* * *

**I'm so so so sorry for not updating this sooner, I never thought it would take this long to post another chapter. Things have been going crazy for me these past few weeks but I promise to try to post more often, you can hold me to it. Again I'm super sorry :(  
**

**Edit: Also, the next chapter is the start of the missing 7 months. I know you guys are smart but I'll be putting 'Missing 7 Months' at the top of each chapter so people know when it's taking place, that and I can't think of another way to tell the past and the present apart.  
**


	13. Abandon Building Number 2

**Just a friendly reminder that all chapters in the past will have 'Missing 7 Months' at the top unless I, or someone, can think of a better way.**

* * *

**Missing 7 Months**

It had been a few days since we received the package with the tape of Alex, Jay had done some digging and found where the tape came from. We were currently on our way there; I didn't want to get my hopes up but I thought there might be a chance Alex was at the address.

"Hey guys, Jay and Katie here. We're heading out to the address from the package we got a few days ago, hopefully we might find something there that could tell us who sent it."

"And possibly find where Alex is, unless he sent us the tape." I added on.

"We really have no idea what to expect but we'll know when we get there."

"Just wish the weather was nicer." I pointed the camera out the passenger window; it was very cloudy out and it looked like it would start raining at any moment. "We still got some ways to go before we get there so we'll start filming again when we reach the place." I said before turning off the camera.

"...What do you think we'll find there?" Jay asked after a few moments of silence, I simply shrugged.

"Like you said, no idea. There could be any number of things that we might find there; we don't even know what's at the address."

"Yeah, I guess you're right." We sat in silence the rest of the ride; we soon turned onto an old dirt road which lead us to a large field with an abandon house.

"Are you sure you have the right address Jay?" I wasn't expecting to find an run down building here.

"Umm...yeah, this is the right place." Stepping out of the car I took a look around the area; I could just make out another building some ways away.

"Someone would only send a tape from here if they didn't want to be found."

"Maybe there's something in the building, come on." Grabbing the camera, Jay lead the way up the path. The building was clearly run down and abandon; the door and windows missing and every wall covered with spray paint. The inside wasn't much better; a large room with a smaller room in the corner with garbage all over the floor and more spray painted walls. A quick search showed nothing of interest was here.

"I'm finding a hard time seeing what we could find here, seeing as there's nothing. Whoever sent that tape probably wrote down a random address so we couldn't find them."

"Maybe...," Jay looked around the building for another moment, "I just can't shake the feeling that's something important is here."

"Can't we just leave; it's getting cold and this place is starting to creep me out." I was getting a bad feeling, like we were being watched and I wanted to leave.

"Yeah, we can leave but I want to come back here." Jay took one more look around the room before following me back to the car.

"I don't know why you want to come back, our experiences with abandon houses are never good."

"I know but it's the only lead we got, the only clue we have on Alex." I sighed, Jay was right; Alex was like a brother to me and I wanted to know he was alive and ok.

"...Ok, we'll come back. My only request is we come on a nicer day, I don't like being in the rain." Jay smiled, a small one but still a smile.

"Fair enough." A few days later we headed back to the house, the weather much better and didn't make the building as creepy.

"Do you think we'll find something this time?" I asked Jay as we walked up the path.

"Maybe, maybe not. We might find something we missed the first time." The building was just as we had left it; another looked showed nothing was here. "There's nothing here! What do you want me to see, there is nothing to see!" I wasn't sure if he was talking to me or himself; I was about to suggest we look around outside when I heard a voice I hadn't heard in some time.

"Katie? Jay?" We whipped our heads around to see Alex standing near the doorway. I couldn't believe it; Alex was here and ok! I almost ran over to hug him when he shushed us and pointed towards the small room in the corner.

"Ok, Katie stay back." Jay half whisper as he made his way into the room. I felt Alex move to stand beside me, my eyes staying locked on Jay. Was there someone else here? Sudden Jay yelped and Masky came darting out of the room. Alex shoved me out of the way as he came running at us, knife in hand. I stumbled a bit, turning back to see Masky slash at Alex.

"Ah, God!" The knife cut along his upper arm but it wasn't very long. Alex tackled him to the ground. "Stay back Katie!" He shouted at me; I remained pressed to the wall, Jay came running over to help Alex, who was struggling to hold Masky down. "Get the cord." Alex indicated to the black cord near my feet. I quickly grabbed them as well as the camera, which surprising was broken from being dropped, and handed the cord to Jay. Alex tied up Masky and held him down; who was still trying to break free.

"You ok Katie?" Jay asked me taking the camera back; I nodded, a little shocked by what happened. "Keep him still." Jay pulled the mask off and for the second time today I was surprised.

"Tim?!" I wasn't expecting him to be the one stalking us these past few months.

"Give me the knife." Alex indicated to the small knife that Tim had dropped.

"No I'm not giving you the knife!" Jay said picking it up. I was worried now; what was Alex planning?

"Then turn off the camera." Alex stood and grabbed a good-sized rock. "He's not gonna follow us!" I threw a quick glance at Jay as we both caught on to Alex's plan.

"Alex stop!"

"Wha-? Hey what are you doing?!" We were too slow as Alex threw the rock at Tim. Tim had managed to move and get on his back, causing the rock to hit his leg. He screamed, his face contouring with pain. Alex raised the rock again but Jay grabbed his arm. "Enough Alex! He can't follow us now; there's no need to kill him!" Alex glared at Jay, I've never seen him so mad before.

"Alex please, just leave him alone." He glance over at me, his face soften a bit but soon changed to an emotionless one.

"Fine, we're leaving." He dropped the rock and headed for the door. I glanced at Tim; he may have stalked and attacked us but I still remembered him as a nice and funny guy. I didn't want to leave him like this. "Come on you two!" Jay could tell what I was thinking but we couldn't do anything with Alex here.

"Let's go Katie." Jay lead me out of the building. I took one last look at Tim; he was still lying on the floor in pain, watching us go.

"I'm sorry." I mouthed to him, I thought I saw him nod but I was outside before I could be sure. Alex was waiting for us by Jay's car, his face was emotionless but I could tell he was mad.

"Let's get going." He hopped into the passenger's seat, I got in the back while Jay drove. Aside from Alex telling Jay where to go the car ride silent but I could tell there was a lot of tension between the two of them. I wasn't really sure how to react; we found Alex, we also found Tim was Masky and Alex tried to kill him. So many new things, I couldn't process them all. We soon arrived at a parking lot near a forest; Jay was the first to speak.

"What were you thinking?! Why did you do that?!" I quickly got out of the car with them, the last thing they needed was to fight.

"I did what I had to do, he just stabbed me."

"You broke his leg with a block of cement!" Alex seemed calm about this, I couldn't understand why he was acting like this; he almost killed a man and seemed ok.

"I could've done worse and I probably should have." Jay looked like he was about to attack Alex, I quickly stepped between them.

"Jay, calm down. Yelling isn't gonna get us anywhere." I quietly said to him, grabbing his hand. He took a deep breath, trying to calm his nerves. I glanced over at Alex; he had taken some steps away, possibly to calm down his self. He was watching me out of the corner of his eye, still as protective as always.

"So how did you know where to find us?" Jay asked Alex, a bit more calmed down. Alex glanced at our hands before answering, which caused me to let go.

"Did some looking around, which lead to finding what hotel you were at, what room you were at and then get a package delivered to your door. You guys aren't exactly hard to find." He said the last part with a small sneer, definitely not like Alex. "Anyway, I got things I need to take care of. There's something I want to show you two so I'll call you when I'm done." He said as he made his way to his car.

"What do you want us to do between now and whenever you decide to call us?" Jay asked, Alex paused for a moment.

"Lay low." With one more glance at me, Alex got in his car and left.

"Yeah. That's great, cool. We're great at doing that, Alex." Jay mumbled as we watched Alex leave.

"You ok?" Jay nodded, I decided not to push about what just happened. "So what do we do now?"

"...Let's just go back to the hotel. We'll figure this out tomorrow."


	14. To Rosswood Park

**Missing 7 Months**

It had been nearly a week since we last saw Alex, waiting for him to call one of us. Yet again we heard nothing from him, a trait he was growing known for. We also hadn't seen Tim since the abandon building. I felt bad about leaving him there, but Alex would have probably stopped me from helping him. I could only hope he made it out ok and that Alex didn't go back to finish him. While we waited for Alex's call we've been sleeping in Jay's car, bettering then spending money on a crappy hotel room according to him. I've been checking my voicemail every day to see if he'd call; there was nothing but yesterday I had gotten a voice mail from Rebecca, asking if I had heard from Alex recently. Apparently Rebecca was still in contact with him up till a week ago, around the time we saw him. She had been trying for days to reach him but his phone would never be on. I thought about telling her the truth, but that would mean possibly getting her involved. I couldn't do that to anyone, especially my own cousin. I told her I hadn't heard from him either; I didn't like lying but I rather lie than getting her roped up in whatever we were in. Currently we were sitting in a parking lot overlooking a lake, one of the few calm days we had. Suddenly his phone rang, startling both of us.

"It's Alex." Jay put his phone on speaker before answering. "Alex-"

"Meet me at Rosswood Park tomorrow." It was easy to tell how expressionless he sounded.

"Why haven't you call us, it's been over a week." Jay tried to question him but Alex cut him off.

"Meet me at Rosswood Park."

"Ok ok, I heard you but where have you been? Alex?" Jay glanced at him phone. "He hung up on me."

"Try calling him back." I suggested, Jay quickly re-dialed his number; there was something off about this.

"You have reached the voicemail of Alex Kralie, I'm not answering the phone right now." Jay signed and ended the call.

"So what are we going to do?" I asked sitting by him on his car's open trunk.

"Wait till tomorrow I guess."

"I meant about Alex, he's not acting normal. Ever since we saw him he's been acting strange; we don't hear from him for a week then he suddenly calls us out of nowhere, tells us to go to some random park then hangs up. That isn't normal by any means."

"You're overreacting Katie; I'm sure Alex is fine, he probably has a lot on his mind. Things haven't been good for use these past months. Tell you what, I'll try calling him later. Deal?"

"Deal, you might be right. I'm just worried about him is all." The next hours flew by, even though we weren't doing anything. Like Jay said he tried calling Alex later but he still didn't pick up; he tried a few more times over the hours but still no answer. "Still not picking up?" Jay had called him one more time before we were going to sleep.

"Nope, just goes to his voice mail; stopped leaving messages too."

"I told you something was wrong."

"I guess... we'll see how he is tomorrow; we should get some sleep anyways." Jay glanced over at me. "Are you fine with sleeping in the back seat? I-I mean, I don't mind if we share the trunk..." Since we had decided to sleep in Jay's car I let Jay have the trunk since it had the most room while I slept in the back seat.

"N-no, I'm fine here." I blushed a little at the thought of sleeping next to Jay, even if it was the trunk.

"If you're sure, night Katie." Jay fixed the camera on the back seat's head rest before closing the trunk.

"Good night Jay." I turned off the light before laying down, hoping to get a few hours of sleep. Before I fell asleep I swore I saw someone walk by the car but I was so tired that I didn't give it another thought.

The next morning, after some time looking around, we found Rosswood Park. It was a fairly large park, a playground in the front with woods in the back.

"Looks like Alex isn't here yet." I said as we pulled into the parking lot, in fact there wasn't any other cars here besides ours.

"Lemma try calling him." Jay handed me the camera while pulling out his phone. I scanned the forest while Jay tried to reach Alex, but all he got was his voice mail.

"Alex, you didn't actually tell us what time you were going to meet us here. So we're here, whenever you decide to come." Jay hanged up and I handed the camera back to him. "Come on." He started to head towards the forest.

"Wait, where are you going? Shouldn't we wait for Alex?"

"It won't hurt to look around." I signed and hurried after him.

"Sometimes I think you don't think things through Jay." I muttered to myself. Luckily the forest wasn't too dense; chances were we could find our way out. After some time walking we came across a field, there were a few fallen logs and what looked like an old chimney. "Do you want to try calling Alex again?"

"Yeah, won't hurt to try." We sat down on a log and Jay handed me the camera again. Yet again it went to his voicemail, something that was no longer surprising me.

"Alex, we're in the woods right now. Near where we picked so… If you're uh, If you're here and if you're wondering where we are. We'll probably be back out there in about fifteen or twenty minutes because I'm not quite sure where we are. So, we'll be out there in just a minute." Jay glanced around the clearing, grabbing the camera and started over towards the chimney.

"Shouldn't we start heading back, it's not like we know this place very well." I followed him around the structure rubbing my head, trying to stop my sudden headache from getting worse.

"I just want to look around real quick." He said peering up and opening.

"I'm not sure what to want to look at an old chimney, it's not like there's anything important- hey!" Jay had started to walk back around the chimney again when he suddenly grabbed me and pulled me to the ground.

"That thing is here!" He half whispered to me. "We need to get out of here. Now." I nodded, I could feel the headache getting worse. Jay peering around, only to pull me up and start running. I caught a glance of Him before we ran into the forest; Jay nearly dragging me along. I wasn't sure how long we had been running or where we were going, the only thing on our minds was getting far away from that thing. I could just make out the forest's edge when suddenly we nearly ran over Alex who was walking along a trail.

"Jay, Katie! What the hell are you doing?!" I would of stopped but Jay still held my hand.

"We gotta get out of here, come on!" Jay shouted over his shoulder. Alex, looking a bit reluctant, followed behind us. Jay finally stopped and sat down by some trees, letting us catch our breath; Alex wasn't far behind us.

"What was that all about? What are you two running from?" It took Jay a bit to answer.

"That-that thing."

"That thing is in there?" Alex indicated to the woods beside us; Jay nodded.

"What were you guys doing a couple miles in the woods?"

"We got tired of waiting on you because you didn't tell us what time you were gonna be here." I answered, earning me a glare from Alex.

"Then we thought we'd take a look around while we waited, and we ended up getting lost."

"You got lost in woods you've never been in." I could almost hear the frustration in his voice; Jay nodded again.

"Do you at least have the camera?" We glanced at each other, neither of us thought to check to see if the other had the camera.

"No, neither of us do." I said, yet again Alex frustration was plain.

"Is the camera a couple of miles in the woods?"

"Yes, its because I dropped it." Jay snapped back; Alex rolled his eyes and I bit back a retort, now wasn't the time to start yelling at each other.

"Let's go." Alex headed back to the parking lot. "Come on, let's go!" 'Standing up me and Jay quickly followed.

"So what exactly did you want to talk to us about?" I asked Alex when we caught up.

"I need your help with my girlfriend, Amy. I need to find her." Alex had a girlfriend? This was news to me.

"So do you have any clues where Amy is?" Alex shook his head.

"Well, what do you want us to do about it?"

"Help me, Jay! Alright? Look, we have a better chance of finding her together." We stopped by our cars; Jay glanced at me and I nodded.

"Ok, we'll-we'll help you, but today… done."

"Why?" Jay simply shrugged.

"Pretty obvious if you ask me." I muttered so only Jay would hear me.

"Fine." Alex made his way towards his car.

"Alex, I said we'll help you. I just, we can't today, not after that. We're just gonna go to a hotel and stay there because I don't want to sleep in my car tonight."

"Fine. Just follow me. I know a couple that are close by."

"I don't want to be close to here." Alex rolled his eyes again, I was really getting annoyed with how uncaring he was acting.

"Just come on."

"Alex, wait." We were getting into our cars when Jay found the camera on the dashboard.

"What?" Alex walked over to Jay's car; Jay held up the camera.

"It was in my car."

"Is there anything on it?" I looked over Jay's shoulder at the screen.

"I don't know; I guess the battery's dead."

"We'll check it when we get to the hotel. Let's go." Alex made his way back to his car; we followed behind him as he left the parking lot.

"Katie, are you ok?" Jay asked after a few minutes of driving.

"Yeah, a little shaken but fine." He looked at me for a bit before nodding.

"Let's just get away from here."

* * *

**Ugh, this isn't one of my best or favorite chapters. I'm would of worked on this more but I had a hard time writing this chapter and I didn't want to make you guys wait longer. Don't worry, the next chapters will be better; I won't give you guys a crappy story.  
**

**Rebecca belongs to Vixin2**


End file.
